The Belle of Shepton
The Vanishing Bank Manager part 4; PLUS virtual research assistant verdict, podcast, and book offer
In the previous edition of Singular Discoveries, we continued the story of William Lidderdale, the vanishing bank manager, who disappeared a few days before his wedding to Bessie Chapman in 1892. Lidderdale’s disappearance was linked to a mysterious woman known as Miss Vining. Decades later, the discovery of an old cedar box suggested William might have faked his death. And investigations into the identity of Miss Vining revealed another mystery — who was Julia Vining, and why had she disappeared around the same time as William?
During the search for William Lidderdale, the Ilminster bank manager who disappeared just days before his wedding in 1892, newspaper reporters identified four individuals who might be the mysterious woman at the centre of the mystery — Miss Vining. Perhaps the most intriguing was a young woman from Westcombe, near Shepton Mallet in Somerset, named Julia Vining.
In June 1893, a case for alimony appeared at Wells County Court, at Wells, near Shepton. May Anne Brown was claiming £13 of arrears from her estranged husband, Charles James Brown. During the hearing, May Brown’s barrister mentioned a woman named Julia Vining. Miss Vining was brought to the house by Charles Brown and “through his coercion” became the couple’s live-in house servant. May was suspicious. According to May, Charles and Julia “always seemed to be doing something on the sly”. One night, May overheard them “talking improperly”. May kicked Julia out of the house, to Charles’s dismay, and this led to the couple’s separation.
This happened in October 1888, and May said Julia was about 21 years old. According to May, Julia went to live in Kilver Street in Shepton Mallet. She didn’t work and said “her father was keeping her”. It was suggested that Charles went to visit her. There was a rumour that Julia was “in trouble”, and May was forced to deny her husband “had a child by a servant girl”. After about 15 months, in about January 1890, Julia moved to Bath.
These details — the age, the occupation, the moves to Shepton Mallet and Bath — match those known about the Julia Vining linked with the disappearance of William Lidderdale. And the identity of one witness confirmed this was the same “exceptionally good-looking”, self-educated young woman who was last seen around the time of William’s disappearance with a large travelling bag. This Julia Vining, previously from the tiny village of Westcombe, was known to her friends as “Jul” or “Jewel” and fondly remembered as “the Belle of Shepton”.
The witness was Mrs Jane Hoare, who records show was Julia’s maternal grandmother. She said she knew nothing about the “mischief” her granddaughter had made and had no idea where she was. “I don’t know any more than you do,” said Jane. “She hasn’t been near me for more than 16 months.” Jane denied that Julia had a child — although she had no recent information. On cross-examination, she said Julia had a child “ever so many years ago” — although it could not have been too many years ago. She had returned after a stay in London with the child, but the child had died.
Then, the court called Charles Brown. He denied he had acted improperly with Julia and said May had been unreasonable. He said he had not been angry when his wife dismissed Julia. However, his evidence ended with a bombshell.
“Where is Julia Vining living now?” asked the Judge.
Charles replied, “She is with me.”
“That will do,” said the Judge. “I won’t ask you any more.”
The court ruled in favour of May. Although Charles might not have been “improperly intimate” with Julia, the Judge highlighted the “significant fact” that Julia was living with Charles at the present time. Weirdly, he said he hoped the ruling would not be an obstacle to Charles and May getting back together, which he saw as “the best solution possible for this unhappy business”. He concluded, rather unfairly: “The girl Vining was at the bottom of this trouble between defendant and wife.”
A month later, May and Charles were back in court over further unpaid alimony. This time, the Judge told Charles he would get little sympathy from any court while he continued to have “the person who was the cause of this disagreement” living under his roof. Charles replied, “The party in question left my service last week.” This caused laughter in the court. Charles said Julia had gone to Lancashire.
Another witness, Agnes Austin, took the stand. May was very jealous of Julia, Agnes said. May claimed Julia had three children with James, and James had given her syphilis. But Agnes thought it was “all rubbish”. She said Julia had stayed with her, and she was very ill. Had Agnes and her husband not been asylum nurses, “they would have said she was insane.” “It was a very strange illness,” said Agnes. She was asked to leave by her landlord due to Julia’s behaviour. Agnes said Julia wanted to go to the Union workhouse. But, in Agnes’s opinion, if Julia had gone there, she would have been “sent to the Asylum”.
According to Charles, this was when he arranged for Julia to move in with him. “It was to prevent such a catastrophe, your honour,” he said. “That was the reason of the significant fact of her being in my employ, and that illness I attribute to my wife’s treatment.” Charles said the situation had affected his health and prevented him from working. Only a “sense of duty” had prevented him from leaving the country.
After all of this, the Judge once again ruled in favour of May, awarding her the claimed alimony plus costs. None of the information presented in this case helped to solve the mystery of the missing banker. But it did help to solve the mystery of the Belle of Shepton.
It seems likely that when Julia Vining left Westcombe and then Shepton with a travel bag and suggestions of an impending marriage, she was leaving with Charles Brown, not William Lidderdale. The timeline provided in the case explains why Julia appears on the census of 1881 while living with her father but does not appear on the 1891 census — nor, apparently, any subsequent census. By 1891, she had moved to Bath and was going through her “troubles”. In 1893, according to Charles Brown, she had gone to Lancashire. After that, no trace can be found.
If Julia was ill, as claimed, it’s possible she ended up in an asylum or died. Notwithstanding the pressures of the situation with the Browns, it seemed Julia had lost a child, which would have had devastating effects. There was also the mention of James having syphilis — possibly a baseless claim, but also a potential source of her illness.
However, we can’t rule out a connection with William Lidderdale. Julia lived near the bank William worked at in Shepton, and a friend told a newspaper reporter, “someone who was at the bank then was paying her a little attention”. William’s brother believed Miss Vining was an English West Country girl who probably came from the Shepton Mallet area. She regularly visited — and then moved to — Bath, where William told his fiancée Bessie he had met his Miss Vining. William also told friends about meeting Miss Vining and showed them a photo. Julia had spent some time in London, where William’s Miss Vining was supposed to live.
Is it possible William had met Julia Vining, and she was the woman who suggested marriage — including in letters seen by William’s acquaintance? Did she see William as a solution to — or an escape from — the situation with the Browns? Unfortunately, with no further record, Julia’s fate is as elusive as William’s. Did they disappear together? Or, as seems more likely, did William use Julia as a way to get out of his impending marriage?
Perhaps the biggest spanner in the workings of this scenario is the fact that William’s Miss Vining was named in his mysterious obituary and in a dedication in a book as BAH Vining, then named by his friend Albert Brookes as Beatrice Alice Hasledean Vining. Records show Julia Vining had no other initials, although her mother was EAH. Beatrice was either an invention or a different person.
So, the case of the singular missing banker ended up being about two missing people — a male banker and a female house servant. Perhaps unsurprisingly, while reams of newspaper columns were filled with speculation about William Lidderdale, very little was said about Julia Vining. While William likely deliberately staged his disappearance to avoid his wedding, Julia likely fell into the cracks in society through no real fault of her own. Both were suffering from illnesses, and it seems probable that neither went on to have healthy and happy lives. Perhaps William took his own life and Julia died in an asylum. But there is another possible scenario:
William Lidderdale met Julia Vining in Bath after he picked up her hat, which had blown off in the street. This was in 1888 or 1889, when Julia was living in Shepton. The pair became friends or lovers. William told his friends about Julia and showed a photo. But William subsequently met Bessie Chapman and became engaged to her in 1890. William told Bessie that although Julia was an acquaintance who wished to marry him, she would not interfere with their forthcoming wedding.
A few days before the wedding, in 1892, William went to London, where Julia was waiting at the train station. William wrote to Bessie, saying, “I soon told her what she wanted and got rid of her. She knows we are to be married… It will be all right.” But William never returned to Bessie, and she never saw him again.
Julia lived in Bath, but was known to have visited London. She disappeared a year after William, in 1893. In 1894, William dismantled a cedar box, presumably for shipping abroad, and marked his name on each piece. The box was lost in a furniture store’s basement. William and Julia’s location remained unknown…
To return to the verdict of crime writer David Hume, written in 1937: “Lidderdale changed his name, probably married Miss Vining, and passed from the sight of those who knew him to start a new life.”
A happy ending for William and Julia, if not for Bessie. And it seems unlikely. While the fates of William Lidderdale and Julia Vining remain shrouded in mystery, one thing is for certain — Bessie Chapman was left heartbroken and with more questions than answers. The curious case of the vanishing bank manager banker continues to fascinate, with the truth mostly likely never to be revealed.
Read on for an alternative verdict.
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Paul’s Notebook
While writing the sprawling story of the Lidderdale case, I used a relatively new tool from Google called NotebookLM. Essentially, NotebookLM is an AI-powered research assistant that can help organise and analyse multiple sources. It should be particularly useful for someone like me who uses lots of sources for each piece I work on. It’s flawed, as we’ll see, but it’s pretty interesting too.
I loaded 50 sources — newspaper clippings, genealogical records, and Google Doc notes — and had NotebookLM create a timeline for the case. This was useful, but not entirely accurate. I could see that some key sources had been missed, and others had been confused. To be fair, there is conflicting information in what is a pretty confusing case.
I asked NotebookLM to summarise the case and profile the main characters. Again, this was interesting but flawed. And when I asked NotebookLM to find specific facts or quotes I knew I had read in the sources, it couldn’t always find them. (Oddly, when I manually searched and then provided the source name, NotebookLM admitted I was right.) But it did offer a fresh perspective on sources I’d trawled through, which was fairly useful.
After I’d written up the story, I asked NotebookLM to provide a verdict on the case based on the sources I’d provided. I’ve pasted the verdict below. It’s missed a few pertinent facts, but it’s an interesting example of how AI works.
Most interestingly, NotebookLM also provides an audio overview, which is effectively a podcast-style discussion between two voices. Again, it’s flawed and confuses some facts, but the conversation sounds incredibly accurate, and it’s another example of how impressive AI is becoming. If I were a host of one of the multitude of “two talking heads” podcasts, I’d be a bit worried…
You can listen to the audio overview here:
And here’s NotebookLM’s verdict:
The Verdict on the Lidderdale CaseThe sources provide a wealth of detail about the Lidderdale case but ultimately fail to offer a conclusive solution to the mystery. There is enough evidence, however, to rule out some possibilities and suggest the most likely scenario.Key Uncertainties:The Identity of Miss Vining: The sources offer conflicting information about Miss Vining, creating uncertainty about whether she was a real person or a fabrication of Lidderdale’s. The 1912 Daily Mirror article and the 1921 Chambers Journal article both mention a Miss Vining named “Beatrice” who was said to have had a yacht called the Foresight, but these are the only two sources to mention this name. Many other sources refer to a “Julia Vining,” and some suggest that there may have even been two women with this name living in the Shepton Mallet area at the time of Lidderdale’s disappearance.The Nature of Lidderdale’s Relationship with Miss Vining: Assuming that a Miss Vining did exist, the nature of Lidderdale’s relationship with her remains unclear. Some sources suggest a romantic connection, while others imply that their association was platonic.The Authenticity of the Foresight and the Obituary Notice: Multiple sources cast doubt on the existence of the yacht Foresight, noting that it was never registered at Lloyd’s. The obituary notice announcing Lidderdale’s death on board the yacht is also suspect, as it was never corroborated by official records.Analysis of Possibilities:Foul Play: While foul play cannot be entirely ruled out, the lack of evidence supporting this theory makes it less likely. No body was ever found, and there was no indication of a struggle or violence. The fact that Lidderdale’s fiancée received a package containing money and a message seemingly written in his handwriting suggests he was alive after his disappearance.Suicide: The possibility of suicide is also unlikely. Lidderdale withdrew a substantial sum of money (£1,000) before his disappearance, which is not typical behaviour for someone planning to take their own life. Additionally, he left behind a fiancée and a promising career.Accidental Death: The obituary notice claimed that Lidderdale died as the result of an accident while disembarking from a carriage. However, given the questionable nature of the obituary itself and the lack of any corroborating evidence, this scenario seems improbable.Staged Disappearance: The most likely explanation for Lidderdale’s disappearance is that he staged it, possibly with the help of Miss Vining. The inconsistencies in the accounts, the dubious obituary, and the mysterious package sent to his fiancée all point to a deliberate attempt to create a false narrative.Motive for a Staged Disappearance:Financial Gain: Lidderdale may have planned to disappear and collect on his life insurance policies. This theory is supported by the fact that he withdrew a significant amount of money before vanishing. However, the insurance companies contested the claims, and no evidence exists to confirm whether Lidderdale ever attempted to collect.A New Life with Miss Vining: Lidderdale may have decided to run away with Miss Vining and start a new life. This theory is fueled by the romantic implications in some accounts and the suggestion that they may have sailed away together on her yacht.Escape from Personal Problems: Lidderdale may have chosen to disappear to escape from personal problems or responsibilities. The sources provide no concrete evidence to support this, but it remains a possibility.Conclusion:The Lidderdale case remains an enigma, but the evidence strongly suggests a staged disappearance. However, the exact motive behind Lidderdale’s actions and the truth about his relationship with Miss Vining remain elusive. The passage of time and the lack of conclusive evidence have ensured that the Lidderdale case will likely endure as one of Britain’s most baffling unsolved mysteries.Thanks for reading the saga of the Vanishing Bank Manager. I split this one into four weekly parts as it was such a sprawling story. Your email inbox can now have a bit of a breather. I’ll be back with an end-of-year round-up, and then we’ll go back to our regular monthly schedule.
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